"A truly stunning work and a masterpiece of its kind. David Goldenberg goes far beyond anyone else in offering the most comprehensive, convincing, and important analysis I've read on interpretations of the famous Curse and, generally, of blackness and slavery. His research is breathtaking. It yields almost definitive answers to many longstanding debates over early attitudes toward dark skin."--David Brion Davis, Yale University, author of In the "Image of God: Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of Slavery"
"A great book on a great topic. It is great both for what it does and what it does not do. What it does is to survey, consider, annotate, and analyze every Jewish text that refers to, or can be thought to refer to, black/dark skin or Black Africans. And yet it does not engage in polemics or apologetics."--Shaye J. D. Cohen, Harvard University, author of "The Beginnings of Jewishness"